What’s your story?

In the beginning there was the word. Immediately afterwards came the story. But there is a new flavour that is being imparted to this deep need: the rise of modern ‘storytelling’. It is a far more directed and purposeful venture, this business of telling stories. Brands need to tell their stories. Individuals’ lives must follow a storyline. Startups must create stories to tell prospective investors. Even ideas need to be dressed up as stories if they want to circulate.

There are good reasons why this should be so. Human beings respond to stories viscerally. An idea by itself can be dry and self-absorbed. But stories are told from a listener’s perspective. They account for the way the listener receives the story, and strive to make themselves easily grasped. A story gives an idea shape and locates it in an emotional context. A good story makes us cheer for the protagonists; we get recruited to their side.

This is extremely valuable, but it comes at a price. The modern mode of storytelling makes truth instrumental. The entire exercise is constructed backwards from the outcome. The listener is being guided along a track to a pre-determined destination. Everything is purposeful and optimised: the arc, the conflict, overcoming obstacles, and a neat consumable resolution.

This form of storytelling makes sense in today’s context for several reasons. It is neat, does not get lost in nuance, and is easily compressible. There is an emotional immediacy about it that makes it shareable. And besides, it creates a feeling of profundity in the listener. Profundity at a massive discount: what’s not to like?

At a deeper level, this changes the way we think about our lives, for our lives feel a compulsion to turn into stories. We convert experiences into arcs, imagining ourselves as protagonists in a journey, living life with one eye on what kind of story this can be converted into. We end up auditioning instead of living. Every little interaction gets elevated into a life lesson on LinkedIn.

Nowhere has it become as fashionable as it has in business circles. Business is always looking for ways of escaping adulthood, to wriggle out of the appearance of seriousness and maturity that it is forced to wear as a costume. The idea of storytelling offers a road to become plausibly infantile. But the moment you strip away the storytelling elements – the arc, the story about obstacles and life lessons – what you find within is the kind of thing greeting cards would be embarrassed to call wisdom.

In this world, what is valued most is authenticity. Storytellers speak of it constantly, partly because it makes the story believable. It seeks to soften the predetermined nature of the message by adding grain to the story.

The typical storyline has an element of the sheepish confessional in it- stumbles, ignorance, and overvaluing of the self, gradually making way for enlightenment and success, that are not necessarily false. But they are carefully selected so as to make the narrative rough around the edges. The messiness of the authentic can never cross a certain boundary, never trespass into territories that are not narratively useful. Authenticity becomes an advertising technique. It simulates the texture of reality while stripping out the unpredictability.

There are two kinds of stories. A closed story is designed to arrive at a point. It is created to make us feel a specific way. It begins with an intention and moves toward a resolution that feels earned but is, in some sense, foreclosed. There is no doubt about what the message is. Most contemporary storytelling sits here.

An open story works differently. It does not aim to land as much as to linger. It still has a shape, but the shape does not converge into meaning. It leaves something ajar, not as a matter of style but in recognition of the nature of reality. You do not come away with a settled conclusion but with a feeling of being disturbed, of having something get unsettled. An open story is a worm in the mind, wriggling uncomfortably long after the story is over.

The difference is not just about endings. It is about who wields authority in the interaction. In a closed story, authority sits with the teller who wields the narrative skilfully. The audience’s role is to ooh and aah at the right moments. In an open story, authority is shared. The listener participates in making meaning.

Open stories are not easy to circulate. They are cussed in the way they prod rather than comfort. Interestingly, most Indian epics tell open stories, which allow for interpretation, discussion and disagreement. Many actions described in these sit on a moral hinge, leaving room for debate for a society to question what its values really are.

A great story opens out possibilities; it lets our minds go to places where reality may not. One travels elsewhere from where one returns differently. A great story moves us, not just in terms of emotion but in terms of perspective. We see the world through someone else’s heart, and we are just that slightly bit different as a result.

Think of the story as a form of reorientation. Of something that allows us to acknowledge complexity by understanding it in human terms. It gives us a way of reaching for things without grasping them fully. It expands our sense of how things might be, without insisting that they are so. A great story allows us to stay unfinished by refusing completeness. At its best, a story is a rope tossed into the future.